Roblox’s strictness on off-site links seems like it’s for kid-friendliness PR reasons rather than being based on how the sites are actually moderated, since as many others have stated, you are 100% allowed to swear and post certain other content on Twitter/Youtube/Twitch which would not be allowed on Roblox, yet those links are still allowed simply because they’re the big-name sites that everyone knows.
I hope that the group system rework will be placed at a much higher priority if Roblox is going to continue blocking off-site community building tools. Roblox has been hinting at the group rework for over 2 years now, but it keeps getting pushed back again and again. As it stands right now, Roblox groups are a mess, and it’s near impossible to use them to build up a constructive community. Hopefully this time the rework will actually come soon, rather than Soon™. If the on-site tools are finally made good enough, perhaps we will no longer have a need to redirect people to 3rd-party sites.
Truly, everyone will bypass this discord policy. I honestly think if you’re gonna allow all those other sites like Twitter, at least allow discord. It’s our means of communication and I wouldn’t be here without it. I have grown on discord using that to interact with other developers for help.
Please let us use discord codes, I don’t even care about the links.
The thing I don’t think ROBLOX is understanding is that doing this will do more harm to ROBLOX than good.
Discord has become an essential staple of the community. Players have been able to talk to each other and get together more easily thanks to discord. Communities on ROBLOX has grown immensely. Developers have even used Discord to benefit their games (berezaa’s Miner’s Haven being a notable example, which actually allows players inside the Berezaa Games discord to gain in-game rewards from activating a daily code received from the discord, which would not have been possible had he not told his players about it through ROBLOX). The community has grown exponentially ever since groups and individuals started using discord, and discord has become one of the primary ROBLOX community websites outside of ROBLOX itself, alongside Twitter and Twitch in popularity among users.
This will do absolutely nothing to benefit that community. In fact, it will do a lot against it more easily. Gaming communities will die out because of ease of lack of communication discord provides. Developer groups will be harder to organize without being able to tell them their discords and get together. The overall fan bases games have built upon the website will decay as a result of developers not being able to talk with their fans through discord and send them there.
I have this one thing to say: I seriously hope ROBLOX reconsiders their plan of action. There have been some choices I seen them make in the past (like their plan to remove the colors from avatars) that would have slightly affected the community if put into action…but THIS, this is a whole new level…this is something that would not only damage the fan bases on ROBLOX, but something that would make a mark within it so deep that the entire community of ROBLOX would slowly crumble apart from the inside out. For the sake of ROBLOX and everyone playing it, I hope they realize the consequences this choice will outcome with.
An academic article was written about my group in a publication from Duke University. If I wanted to share it with my group how would you suppose that I do that, @Roblox?
I feel I need to make a summed up version of why this decision is the worst decision ever.
First, let’s start off with what the actual OP said.
Wait, what? Let’s break this down.
Looking to find the "best balance between enabling creative and social experiences, while also ensuring a safe and friendly working environment for everyone?"
Discord is by far the best example of a social experience. Discord is made as a hangout for users to communicate with each other and play games with each other. Obviously, there is more to Discord, but that’s one aspect. If you are saying Discord isn’t a social experience, you are misinformed.
"Since Discord’s Terms of Service only allows people aged 13 or older to use their platform and Roblox is a platform for all ages, we cannot risk unfairly exposing underage users to platforms such as Discord." … "We understand the argument can be made that YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch all have similar policies regarding users under 13, but these platforms also allow users to browse without logging in, while Discord requires you to have an account so people aged 12 and under cannot see the information you are linking. This is the primary reason we are not able to allow it."
There are so many things wrong with this statement.
Yea. You are right. YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch all have those policies, much like Roblox. Yet kids lie. It happens. You can’t put anything past ‘em. It’s not the companies’ fault, it’s the parents’. Nothing you can do.
How does the fact that a website allowing you to view content while not being required to sign up GOOD if that website requires you to be 13? It makes no sense. It’s like you are encouraging users to go to Twitter, not sign up, and then not complain if they see inappropriate content whilst not being signed up. If you are required to sign up to view content as Discord supposedly is, then isn’t that GOOD in terms of security? If the user lies, it’s on them; not Roblox.
"We are in the process of reviewing all game descriptions and old forum posts for Discord links and will be removing these descriptions and posts over the next few weeks. If you think that your post or description has been incorrectly moderated, please email appeals@roblox.com with the information on your game and your concerns."
Only concern with this is that these posts that get moderated receive a warning or ban. If a post gets moderated for something that WASN’T a rule and that person gets banned, that is completely unfair and will guarantee players and developers leave.
"We’re aware that our current chat / messaging and group systems do not allow developers to do all of the things they want for the player communities they’ve established and we are actively working on creating better features and tools in hopes of resolving this. In the coming year look for announcements from us regarding improvements and changes to game description, chat, and group functionality."
If you KNOW that Discord is relied on by SO MANY developers, why would you restrict access to it? If you KNOW it doesn’t provide what Discord does, why remove access to it? It’s completely absurd. Discord provides core features for a functional community, and most especially for developers. I will get to this later. Discord has a clean UI, amazing moderation systems. bots, etc. that enhance communication, moderation, keeping the server safe, etc. Discord also has many games using it VERIFIED, such as Minecraft, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, etc. Why does Roblox have to be the odd-ball in an ever-so increasing world of online communications?
Now, let’s get into what HASN’T been said in Roblox’s original post.
Discord is by far the best thing to happen to Roblox. It allows for such amazing communication among communities. But, most importantly, it allows for communication among developers. Before Discord, SO MANY developers worked alone because there was nothing good to communicate with fellow developers. Roblox has it’s ####### ###### ### filter and other applications are just… bad. But now, with Discord, there are becoming more and more TEAMS of developers, getting closer and closer together.
So many gamers use Discord. It’s just a fact now. If you ask in-game “who has discord,” an insane amount of people say something along the lines of “I do,” “me,” “add me @_____#____,” and it’s just unfair for those that just want to play a game with their friends.
A lot of development communities have centered around Discord. For instance, take Hidden Developers by @HoudiniDev. The Discord server has such AMAZING creations posted by members, and we do quite well keep it PG and abiding by Roblox’s rules. I see nothing wrong with this amazing aspect of Roblox development.
People will just bypass it. It’s just a fact. So many people use Discord, it’s insane. Additionally, look at the number of people that bypass the other rules; posting links to other websites.
Banning users from linking a Discord server on their Twitter, YouTube channel, etc. is completely out of jurisdiction and will just result in developers leaving.
Can’t you just like… oh I don’t know, just block ALL links for ONLY users <13. Obviously, block links for 13+ that are rated triple-X, but is it really necessary? If these websites are for 13+ only, then block it for <13 and allow it to be seen by 13+.
I could put much more, but this is already quite long.
TL;DRThis decision was by far ONE OF the worst made as it’s just ruining communities and teams of developers.
In my opinion the last 2 sentences are slightly over exaggerated. Roblox functioned fine without Discord so I don’t think it will slowly crumble apart from this change.
We hear your complaints. We don’t like to impose restrictions to your ability to manage or build communities without offering any alternatives. With that said, I highly encourage you to post feature requests geared towards improving the tools we do offer for this. Improving the platform for developers is an important goal, and the best way to accomplish this is to ensure you have the tools at your disposal to be successful.
When Roblox removed Tix, they offered a 30 day window of time for users to prepare for the changes. Why don’t you do that now? Allow us the time to make feature requests and allow them to get implemented before tightening down on our functionality.
This is a very poor decision with not much logic to back it up.
Why not filter out the links for users under the age of 13? You already have different filter systems for the two age groups.
Err… so what? Other people have mentioned that it is possible to see server content without an account, and I have no idea if that’s true or not since I never sign out, but even if that’s not the case, this argument seems irrelevant. If it’s a matter of the mod being able to review server content, most of your mods most likely have a Discord account already anyway.
So? I’d think this is actually a benefit from a moderation standpoint.
If you really plan on truly making all of the same functionalities of Discord available on ROBLOX, you’re basically saying that you’re going to completely remake Discord. That would be, quite frankly, a waste of time. Discord is an entire company focused on one single product, and you are a company focused on sustaining and improving an entire platform. There is statistically no way to realistically build and operate a system equivalent to that of Discord while running everything else.
Ultimately, I feel that the banning of Discord links is only further destroying the social aspect of ROBLOX. I have no reliable way of contacting ROBLOX developers/players other than Discord. The messaging system has been beaten and battered to dust, and is essentially completely unusable when trying to have an intelligent conversation. In-game chat is hardly a replacement for development conversations, and the forums… enough said about the forums.
If f I remember correctly, Roblox made a really big push to get Roblox players to stream their gameplay on Twitch not so long ago. Yet twitch links are not provided. Even as Roblox hosts streaming all week, yet does not allow twitch links.
That would explain why I was moderated for a Wikipedia link I posted on the forums in 2014 then. What, do you have a bot scraping through and flagging or moderating posts with offsite links? Not cool.
I never really had a problem with this, I always assumed this was the rule so I just have the discord link pinned at the top of my twitter for the game, and any user who cares enough to even be an active member of my games community finds it easily enough without me having to directly link it anywhere.